The Wall Street Journal asks who’s responsible for the fall in price of crude oil over the past few days: http://blogs.wsj.com/environmentalcapital/2008/08/12/falling-oil-whodunnit/

Thomas Friedman in the NYT (clearly just back from strawberry picking in the Nordics) asks is it better for oil to remain high: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/10/opinion/10friedman1.html?em

Tom Raftery has been saying for months that oil is better off over $200 per barrel: http://greenmonk.net/the-sooner-oil-hits-200-per-barrel-the-better/

And back to the WSJ which claims at off-shore drilling is really a complete non-issue despite the above: http://blogs.wsj.com/environmentalcapital/2008/08/12/rigged-why-does-offshore-drilling-dominate-the-debate/

Image courtesy of http://flickr.com/photos/welshy/

Shell made £2,000,000 profit per hour last quarter.

Some points from GreenBang:

• First, Shell maintains it is committed to investing in renewable energy and clean technology and the company does spend $500m a year on alternative energy resources. But let’s put that into a bit of perspective – that’s about five days’ profit based on today’s results.
• Next is the fact these latest profits were boosted by Shell’s Canadian oil sands business. The high price of oil now makes this controversial form of oil extraction financially viable for the big oil companies (not just Shell), but it is more energy and carbon intensive than traditional extraction.
• Finally let’s not forget Shell recently sold its stake in the Array London wind power project – the world’s largest offshore wind farm project, although Shell maintains that decision was not a reflection on its commitment to alternative energy and points to its involvement in many similar projects around the world.

More on the Guardian

That’s 30,000,000 people. Nearly half the population of the UK. Not exactly a few poor farmers kicked off their land by unthinking palm growers.

Earth2Tech reported this yesterday. The number is staggering. And further on in piece they highlight another heinous issue related to biofuels that is going largely unreported. The CO2 impact of the palm oil plantations.

The report goes beyond the humanitarian consequences and puts numbers to the environmental boondoggle that is the current biofuel economy. Oxfam estimates that land-use changes largely from the palm oil plantations that have popped up around the world’s equator, are emitting a huge amount of CO2, and it will take 46 years of projected 2020-level biofuel use to make up a “carbon debt.”

So it’s time to tell UK transport minister, Opus Dei practitioner and ardent biofules supporter, Ruth Kelly, exactly what you think of the UK’s continued support of this energy source. Information on how to do this is here.